I used to think a safe space was a person— someone I could cling to, someone who would anchor me with their knowing.
But I’ve been corrected.
The library is my safe space. Here, there is no right or wrong. No pressure to choose the correct face, no fear that my words will be too much, or not enough. No deed is too direct, or too restrained.
There’s no need to perform. No urgency to “be somewhere” for fear that life outside is racing ahead and I must catch up or be forgotten.
There are no shifting opinions here— no trend masquerading as law. Only pages. Ideas already stripped bare. Words that have outlived judgment, floating around me like a blanket.
They are just there— for the taking, for the mending.
Here, I get to choose what I consume. What I transform. Here, I’m not behind. I’m not failing. I’m not watched.
Time stands still. I am free. The library is my safe space, after all.
When I look back at grandma’s voice in my life, what echoes most is her steady insistence on self-worth. She spoke it not as theory, but as something she believed I deserved to hold onto—even when she herself was still learning what it meant. And isn’t that what mothers do? They plant seeds, even before they know the full tree that might grow from them.
However, self-worth without discernment is like honey without bees: sweet but defenceless.
For me, learning that balance has come in unexpected ways. Sometimes, it feels like laying out small riddles to the people I let close, just to see if they can read the language of my heart. It is not about trickery. It is about recognition. A person who sees you—truly sees you—will not stumble where swiftness is the honour due. People of worth can not sit comfortably with one-sidedness. Their spirit will press them to give something back.
They will not treat pearls like pebbles.
But here’s the part I want you to remember: withdrawing when the riddle is left unanswered is not cruelty. It is dignity. It is not pride to flinch at being mishandled. It is the soft, firm knowing of what you carry and the grace of refusing to lay it before blindness.
This, however, is not a call to live narrow or paranoid, constantly on defence. Life will bruise you regardless because no one is perfect—we ourselves, even with the best intentions, have hurt others unknowingly. The aim is not to build walls so high that you suffocate, but to recognize the urgency with which someone reaches for you. That urgency speaks volumes.
Perhaps that’s the second lesson, my darling: self-worth is not just a defence; it is also a gift. To know your own value is to walk lighter. It frees you from endless proving. You will test, yes. But you will also rest. Because what is truly for you will recognize you without delay.
Also, don’t forget that it is wisdom to leave people alone when they want to be left alone—another lesson I had to learn and weave into the balance of discernment.
I have an inkling, however, that you may not even need this particular lesson like your mother who, almost innately, seemed to find the balance. She knows when to draw close, when to step back, and how to honour herself without apology. For me, it was less natural. I had to wrestle with it, to learn by trial, to test and be tested in return.
And so my wish for you, little one, is that you will inherit the best of both: your grandmother’s steady voice, your mother’s quiet balance, and my hard-earned discernment. With these, you will walk sure-footed into the world, knowing that what you carry is treasure, and you are never less for expecting it to be treated as such.
With all my love, Your Auntie.
The Empathic Social Observer.
P.S. Some people call it “playing oblivious.” I call it sparing yourself unnecessary battles. Not every invitation to wrestle deserves your strength.
You thought you’d have a book—maybe not a bestseller, but something with your name printed on it. Something real. A spine. A dedication page. Maybe a small cult following on Goodreads.
You thought the words you wrote in your journal, in the margins of dental notes, in scraps of WhatsApp chats, would amount to something more solid by now. Something established. But here you are. Living in the parentheses. Surrounded by half-done projects, open tabs, and stories you don’t feel brave enough to finish.
It’s okay. I’m not here to push you. I’m just here to sit with you in the “not yet.”
Because me too. Everything in my life feels half-baked, like batter waiting on heat. An e-book unopened. A blog with five drafts and no posts. A dream deferred because real life needs dinner and deadlines and someone to reply to that email with “Kind regards.”
But I still believe in you. Not because of what you’ve published—but because of how you see. Because you notice the quiet things. The ache behind a sentence. The way some people speak in ellipses and others in punctuation marks. Because you feel everything like it’s your job. And maybe it is.
Writing is a long, strange becoming. It rarely feels like success. It mostly feels like returning. Sitting with yourself. Listening. Starting again.
So no—maybe you’re not “a writer” in the polished, podcast-interview, book-tour way. But you’re writing. Even when you feel like a ghost in your own pages. Even when you think no one sees you.
I do.
And I’m rooting for you. Not the polished, perfect version. You. Half-baked. Becoming. Trying again.
With softness, Meestique. The Empathic Social Observer.
A letter to the soft-hearted men who still believe they’re allowed to feel.
I’ve been thinking about you. Not as the crowned king or Goliath’s slayer. But as the boy who wept on fields and composed his ache into song. The one who didn’t hide from grief or beauty or need. And I wonder—if you were alive today, how would they receive you? A man who danced in public with his chest bare, cried over friends, mourned his enemies, and wrote entire chapters of vulnerability— Would they call you too soft? Too sensitive? Not man enough? Would they post sermon clips saying, “God doesn’t respond to emotions, only to His Word”— as if your Psalms weren’t Scripture now, as if you didn’t cry your way into divine intimacy?
Today’s world likes things neat.
Clean theology.
Sharp doctrine.
They want God to be a vending machine: input promise, receive miracle. But you? You just showed up. Some days with praise. Other days with rage. Many days with no plan—just your heart in your hands. And still—you were called a man after God’s own heart. Not because you quoted chapter and verse. But because you dared to be real. You let your longings be seen. You made your wounds into worship. You led armies and played the harp. You confessed without curating. You danced and cried and begged and trusted —all in the same body. These days, a man like you might be mocked. Told to “man up.” Told to stop being dramatic. Told to pray more “strategically.” They’d call your tears weakness, your openness a liability. They wouldn’t understand that faith sometimes leaks through cracks, that intimacy with God is sometimes messy. But you knew. You knew that wholeness doesn’t mean perfection— it means nothing is hidden. You brought it all to Him. And heaven didn’t flinch.
There are men today—good men— who are bleeding under the weight of detachment. Who want to cry but don’t. Who want to be known but fear it’ll cost them respect. Who’ve been told that silence is strength and need is weakness. But you lived another way. You remind us that courage and tenderness can live in the same voice. That devotion isn’t always polished. That to lead doesn’t mean to harden. That to be after God’s heart, you sometimes have to pour out your own. Thank you, David. For being a map. For showing that the soft-spoken don’t have to become loud to be seen. That the broken can still be beloved. That vulnerability, far from disqualifying us, often makes us holy.
With honour,
Meestique A feeler, a writer, and a believer in softness that still leads.
3This is the first in a series of essays I’m calling “Abuja Roads”—a meditation on driving, fury, beauty, and what the road reveals about who we really are. I love this city. But I also want to fight half its drivers. Welcome to the contradiction.
1. On Lane Wanderers and the Indecision of Character
Abuja. The beautiful city I grew up in. The only city I’ve really known as home.
The roads are wide, like they were designed for dreaming. And at this time of year, between the end of May and early June—the city is in bloom. The red-petal trees are in full performance, screaming against the lush green of roadside lawns and leaves, bold and unignorable. The colours clash and sing. And it’s clear: rainy season has begun.
The trees always announce it before the skies do. And whenever I see those petals scattered across the road like flower girls passed through, I know change is here—maybe in the weather, maybe in my skin.
There’s something about Abuja’s views that gives you that “inside-outside” feeling—like you’re both far away and deeply within something. The quiet neighbourhoods. The polite, well-dressed people who mind their business.
And yet.
Driving in this city I love has revealed another side of its soul. A microcosm of its collective psyche. The road has become its own kind of mirror.
Of all the things that trigger me in this life, nothing outranks the drivers who refuse to pick a lane. The ones who perch their vehicles on the lane markings instead of inside a lane. They sway from line to line like the roads were custom-designed for their indecision. As if being halfway here and halfway there is a strategy. As if everyone should wait while they figure themselves out.
I’m convinced this kind of driving speaks to something deeper: a certain kind of indecision about life itself. Or maybe it’s greed. Selfishness. The kind that keeps all options open, even if it means blocking others from moving freely along their own paths.
But maybe—just maybe—the intensity of my reaction also says something about me. Why do I get so triggered by indecision and dogged self-preservation? Why does that energy offend me on such a cellular level? I don’t know. But I watch it. And that tension alone is worth writing about.
2. The Elbow Men and My Inner Gore
Then there’s another group of drivers—mostly taxi men, mostly male—who love to hang their non-dominant arm out of the window like a soft flag of ego. Always relaxed. Always on display.
When I was younger, my mum told me they do it to show off—that they can drive with one hand. A testament to skill. Or masculinity. Or both. The way she said it stayed with me—not angry, just… detached. That tone mothers use when they’ve seen something foolish so many times that it no longer surprises them. Only bores them.
I wish I could assume that same posture in my mind.
Instead, I find myself nursing dark, ridiculous thoughts. Fantasies. That one day, a car will clip one of those arms clean off. Blood spurting, dismembered limb flying across the tar, finally coming to rest on the pavement. Just that one wild moment of chaos—enough to teach them to keep their body parts inside the damn vehicle.
Of course, I know where this comes from. I’ve watched one too many serial killer documentaries. Vikings. Game of Thrones. All that gore. But still, I marvel at how easily my mind goes there. I marvel at my own capacity for absurd rage. And yet… I keep watching.
3. The GLK Spirit (a.k.a. Carry Your Wahala and Go)
Next up: the drivers of the GLK.
You know them. The big-bodied Benz SUVs that move like they were born with entitlement in their engine. The ones who drive like they paid for the roads. Who act like your lane is optional when they need space.
I’ve stopped arguing with them. I simply move. Let them pass. I file them under “arrogance that comes with wealth,” especially in a country like ours, where money is a kind of armour, and driving a GLK is less about transportation and more about domination.
Carry your wahala and go.
4. “Na Woman Dey Drive”: On Gender, Skill, and Fragile Egos
But no rant about Abuja roads would be complete without the classic line: “Na woman dey drive.”
Every woman who’s ever driven in this city has heard it. Usually from the moment a man realises that it’s you, a woman, in front of him—obeying traffic laws, being cautious, not needing to impress anybody.
He says it with that special brand of contempt. Like it explains every traffic situation. Like it’s a diagnosis for slowness. Or uncertainty. Or just existing with ovaries and a driver’s license.
Sometimes I pause. I ask myself: is this still 2025?
Do they really think driving is some mystical masculine birthright? Do they not know that driving—like cooking, like cleaning—is a skill? That it’s learned through repetition, refined through experience? I work in a skill-based field. Every day, I see women perform delicate, precise, life-altering procedures. So why is steering a Toyota the line some men can’t cross?
Maybe it’s not about driving. Maybe it’s about power. Space. Control. The same script, new location.
Just yesterday, one man threw his sense into the gutter—trying to overtake me from the right side of a single-lane road full of potholes. Nearly scratched both our cars just to prove that he was The Man. I just shook my head.
Na wa o. I rest my case.
5. But Just Before I Rest…
There’s still so much more to say. I haven’t even touched on the ones who reverse on expressways or the drivers who use hazard lights as an apology in motion. But one essay at a time.
Maybe the roads are just a stage. Maybe we’re all performing—anger, masculinity, survival. And maybe, just maybe, the car horn is our national dialect for “Notice me.”
I write this to you even before meeting you, knowing that if you are like me, your heart will be open—bleeding sometimes for justice, to see and be seen, aching to love.
It is not out of vanity that I compare you to me, or that I want you to live in my shadow. It is because with every letter I write, I want to share myself with you—fully and honestly—so that you will see me as human, flawed and learning, just like you will be. My words come from experience, both pleasant and painful.
You will come to understand, however, that we all succumb to vanity sometimes. Knowing this—recognizing it in yourself and others—will be useful in the years to come. But that is a letter for another day.
Today, I want to speak to you about something simpler, yet harder to master: Actions are more powerful than words.
Because you are a woman, words may carry great weight in your life. Compliments will thrill you. Apologies might disarm you. Promises could make your heart swell. And yet—none of them are the truth. Not on their own, anyway. And that’s a lot coming from me who loves words and knows how powerful they can be. But you must train your mind to become more perceptive to actions—your own, and those of others.
Let your words be few, and always rooted in intention. Speak to shape the world, not to decorate it. And when others speak—pause, and watch. The person who says they care but never shows up for you, The friend who always talks about being honest but tells white lies to everyone else, The man who writes you poetry but flinches at the idea of sacrifice— These are your lessons.
People will be watching you too, even when they don’t realize it. They’ll watch to see if you bluff. If you fold under pressure. If your actions betray insecurity. Let them watch. But more importantly, let yourself watch. Let your own actions be the evidence of your values.
If you ever feel lost between what someone says and what they do, Always choose to believe what they do.
There are some battles you fight with your voice—loud, visible, dramatic. But there are others where the battleground is your mind, your relationships, your inner silence. These are the kinds of wars you can’t always name, but you feel them… In your discernment. In the shift in the atmosphere, In the part of you that knows something deeper is going on.
I’m not writing this to impress you with spiritual talk. I’m writing this because I’ve seen firsthand how unseen wars can erode trust, twist perception, and try to mute your spiritual clarity.
So this is for anyone quietly fighting a war they didn’t choose, but can no longer ignore.
I’ve been thinking a lot about war lately. Not the kind that makes headlines, but the kind that happens quietly—between the “Amen” and the argument, in the strange hollowness after worship, in the too-loud silence of a room where love once flowed freely.
Spiritual warfare. We say it like we understand it, but most of us imagine either cinematic exorcisms or philosophical metaphors. Rarely do we recognize it in the moment it’s actually happening:
when forgiveness becomes impossible
when bitterness becomes seductive
when the perception of Christians and our faith in pop culture is one of weirdos and misguided fanatics
when to speak the truth of Jesus Christ makes you stand out as a troublemaker who doesn’t encourage logical thought
when sleep steals your prayerlife and offense becomes your love language.
Nobody tells you how sneaky the enemy is. That he rarely knocks loudly. He whispers. He rewrites reality in small, believable sentences: “You’ve failed again.” “She doesn’t care about you.” “Why bother?” “You’re not enough.”
He is not creative, but he is consistent. And if you are not armed, you are available.
Ephesians 6 is not poetic filler. It is God’s strategy for people living behind enemy lines. Paul didn’t say, “Put on the vibe of resilience.” He said, Put on the full armour of God. Because this war does not wait for you to feel ready. It doesn’t care about your calendar or your therapy appointment. It will attack you through your relationships, your emotions, your insecurities—and it often begins in your mind.
This is not a call to paranoia. It is a call to sobriety. To know when what you’re feeling isn’t just hormones or mood or miscommunication—but a targeted scheme to rob you of joy, clarity, unity, and peace.
And in those moments, the real work is not to “win the argument” or “fix the situation.” The real work is to stand. To resist the temptation to return fire in the flesh. To pick up your sword (Scripture), your shield (faith), your helmet (salvation), and pray like the war depends on it—because it does.
There is no soft way to be a soldier. But there is grace. Grace to stand even when your legs shake. Grace to repent when you fall. Grace to forgive when it costs you pride. And grace to be alert—not anxious, but awake.
Because if you’ve ever felt like something invisible is trying to steal your peace, distort your love, silence your prayers, or drain your joy— you’re not crazy. You’re just in a war you were born into.
But child of God, you were also born to overcome.
This post is not the final word on spiritual warfare. It’s a flashlight in a dark hallway—just enough light to help you reach for your armour again.
So if you’re in the thick of it, feeling misunderstood, misrepresented, or just spiritually numb— Know this: you’re not alone. And you’re not powerless.
I think we’re all beginning to tell ourselves the truth—and it’s quietly reshaping everything.
The truth that love, as many of us have known it, may have been more of a transaction than we cared to admit.
That many men don’t always choose women because they’ve been deeply seen—but because something about her works. She’s a life plan. A soft place to land. A way to prove, “I’ve made it.”
And yet, not always someone to know. Not always someone to sit with, slowly, curiously, reverently. Not always someone to grow beside—because that kind of growth is uncomfortable.
I don’t think this is all wickedness. I really don’t. Sometimes it’s exhaustion. Sometimes it’s a longing for peace in a world that’s taken too much already. Sometimes it’s survival.
But it still makes it hard to breathe. Because a woman can be deeply partnered—yet still feel like she’s carrying the weight of the intimacy alone.
Especially the woman who has done the inner work. The one who has faced herself in the mirror and refused to look away. The one who has read the books, dug through her childhood, cried through therapy, asked God hard questions, and softened anyway.
She’s not waiting to be rescued. But she is hoping to be met.
Not worshipped. Not idolised. Met.
On ground that is tender. Real. Uncurated.
But sometimes she’s met with something else: A man who wants love—but hasn’t figured out who he is without applause. A man who is tired—but won’t say it out loud. A man who is yearning, yearning to be seen—but only knows how to perform.
And so, he “chooses” her. Because she makes him feel better. Not because he’s ready to see her.
It sounds like a compliment. But it isn’t.
Because when the fog lifts, and the performance dies down, She may realise she’s entered a love where her soul is unknown. Where her mind is unstudied. Where her vulnerability is either too much—or goes unnoticed entirely.
And brothers, that’s not partnership. That’s not love. That’s branding. That’s optics. That’s a narrative looking for a pretty co-star.
I don’t say this to shame you.
I say it because I’ve been that woman. And I know too many others who have worn the same ache.
So, if you’re reading this and you feel seen—or stung—pause there.
Ask yourself: Who am I without the role I’m performing? What do I really want from love? What do I actually have to offer another soul?
To the ones doing the inner work—quietly, consistently, even when no one claps—this is not your indictment.
It’s okay if you don’t have all the answers yet.
But please—don’t reach for someone to complete a picture you haven’t taken time to develop.
Love her, not the role she fits. Learn her, not just what she provides. See her, not just what she softens in you.
And if you’re not ready—be honest. Don’t pick her because she makes you look less lonely. Pick her because you want to walk with her—and keep walking.
Back in 2021, I was quietly training myself in the art of writing. No degree. No cheering squad. Just me, my hunger to learn, and your books—Structuring Your Novel, Creating Character Arcs. They were more than guides; they were scaffolding for a dream I hadn’t yet admitted aloud.
I remember tagging you in a post on Twitter, unsure if it would even be seen—and you responded. It wasn’t just a thrill. It was a moment of being seen, recognized, and reminded that the writer I was becoming mattered, even in her silent beginnings.
Your work taught me something I hadn’t known how to name: that structure is not a cage, but an offering. That story form can be a map, not a muzzle. That creative freedom isn’t diminished by craft—it’s deepened by it.
Where others mystify the writing process, you illuminate it. And not from a distant, academic pedestal, but with warmth, clarity, and respect for those of us still learning to put one honest sentence after another.
I often think about how so much writing advice feels like it was written from a mountaintop. But yours? Yours felt like it came from the same workshop I was sitting in—ink-stained fingers, coffee rings on the desk, plot questions scribbled in the margins. You didn’t just teach; you invited.
Thank you for making the invisible visible. For reminding us that feeling and form are not enemies. They’re sisters. And when they work together, the story breathes.
P.S. I’ll never forget the section where you explored the power of asking “What if?” to spark plot twists or steer a story forward. It felt like you handed me a golden lamp with limitless wishes. Suddenly, the blank page wasn’t empty—it was alive with possibility. I’m still working on my novel, blogging in the meantime since time won’t yet let me dive fully into plotting. But I’m still here—still learning, still writing.
With gratitude, Meestique The Empathic Social Observer
The Empathic Social Observer 